Entertaining the Masses

Now, I realize that I've done a piece about this before, but I feel that this is kind of a perennial issue to discuss.

I strongly believe that one of the best reflections of a society is the way that they entertain themselves. It is through this that societal norms are observed and either exploited or ridiculed; for example, on one hand, you have television shows such as "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "Friends" or "How I Met Your Mother" that fall into the former category, whereas shows such as "South Park", "The Simpsons", and to a lesser degree, any piece of shit that Seth MacFarlane has decided to grace the world with ridicules and parodies the world around it.

However, a third interpretation of today's norms that is emerging today is one that is pushing the boundaries of societal norms; television shows so tense that it may cause the viewer to actually have the emotional feedback of discomfort from watching it.

Perhaps the best example of this is the AMC drama "Breaking Bad", starring Bryan Cranston.

Yes, that's right. The bumbling, comic relief dad from FOX's "Malcolm in the Middle" takes on a serious role in a gripping drama. And he does an amazing job.

I'm not spoiling anything by saying that the show starts off dark. Cranston plays as Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher that for some reason, didn't reach his full potential. Walter is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and after seeing a meth lab raid and how much money is in the business, he connects with one of his former students, Jesse Pinkman, and starts cooking meth to leave money for his family after he dies. Walter adopts a very driven, ends-justify-the-means attitude, and is absolutely tenacious in his practices.

And it only gets darker from there.

There have been a couple of times that the show has been so situationally tense that I've actually had to take the episode in baby steps.

As I had previously mentioned, the way we entertain ourselves is a figurative reflection of our society today. It might sound cliche, but on some level, whether we choose to or not, we can find some way to connect with what we do, watch, listen to, or anything like that. And that's kind of the beautiful thing about our society: we can do that instead of lambasting people who are either fighting for their lives (Roman Gladiators) or sacrificing their dignity for whatever reason (the pillories of the middle ages).

In the same token, however, those two have been replaced by more commercially and almost aesthetically pleasing programming, and this is what I like to call the soft, white underbelly of television and media today: reality television.

It's amazing on how unlike reality this programming is. Starting from "The Real World" and moving on to the various "survival" television programs, I would argue that these shows are kind of the court jesters for society today; factored down to the lowest common denominator and easy to understand. Because of these two reasons, the average person can jump right into the action without having a clue as to what is going on, and because the viewership of the show is so high, it provides common ground for entire groups of people to stand on, not to mention the sensation of "he-said-she-said" drama. We've kind of adopted a "everything is all fun and games until someone gets hurt, then the ratings go up" mentality, and since chances are you've never met the people on the shows to begin with, it has little tangible impact on your life except giving you something to talk about when you're at the water cooler.

Possibly the best example of this is MTV's latest reality show, "The Jersey Shore." I made an attempt to sit through an episode of this, just to see what the deal was with it. I was met with the television equivalent of a train wreck; I couldn't stare, but at the same time, I just couldn't look away. Perhaps that's what captivates the audience; constantly and consistently wondering what's going to happen next.

I could go on for pages upon pages about the nuances of television and the various other ways we entertain ourselves, as the possibilities are limitless. If you, the reader is interested in this, I can continue this topic into sports, music, etc..

And that's my view.